Full Circle Read online

  He jammed his hands deep into his pockets. “You still want the long version?”

  Kayla had an uncommon urge to reach over and slide her arm around his. Entwine herself in close. Feel his strength and his heat as he spoke. It was a ridiculous urge and swiftly repressed. But the thought was strong enough to raise a flush to her cheeks. “Go on.”

  But he didn’t. Adam scuffed his feet along the paved walk, ignoring the neighboring rugby match, even when the players came roaring up within a stone’s throw of their path. His breath puffed toward his feet as he finally said, “I’d like to say it doesn’t matter. That the whole thing is just one woman coping with the impossible. But I’ve been trying to be very honest about all this. Mom really prizes honesty, and I haven’t given her much of that in my life. I guess that’s why I was a decent actor. So I decided that was what I would give her here at the end. Honesty. I’m getting all tangled up here, aren’t I?”

  Kayla said softly, “The dreams.”

  “I feel them. She tells me these things, and I’d love to just shrug them off and give her a hug and walk away. From her and what she’s saying and everything that’s so totally out of control. But if I’m going to be honest, then I have to admit that when she talks about them, I feel like I’ve got this huge bell inside me, and it just goes bong.” He made two fists and shook them. “Mom’s last dream was that when I got here, I’d find a sign that she was right to tell me to come and I was right to do what she asked.”

  “You didn’t want to come to England?”

  “Are you kidding? Mom is dying.” The word chopped his breathing into tight fragments. “I hated the idea. But she begged. I hated that even worse.”

  “Why did she ask you?”

  “She said I would have to discover that for myself.”

  “You found the sign, though, didn’t you.” Kayla remembered the conversation she had overheard between Adam and his mother. “The Eve Arnold prints.”

  “You can’t imagine what it was like walking in and seeing those images from my childhood all over the office walls.”

  “Actually, I can.”

  Adam did not seem to hear her. “I talked with Mom yesterday. She said to find another lonely old woman. I don’t know if it was from a dream or not. But the words resonated like the other times. So I did it.”

  “Your visit with Dr. Beachley,” Kayla said.

  “I’m taking her to some church service at her old college tonight. I forget what it’s called. The last service before the students go home for Christmas.”

  “Advent,” Kayla supplied. “It’s a very special occasion, the high point of the school’s winter calendar.”

  “You should have seen her face when I offered.” Adam looked so sad. He might have been talking about the professor, but his thoughts were clearly on another old woman, one much farther away. “Dr. Beachley used to go with her son, but he’s been relocated to Edinburgh. The rest of her family are either too far away or busy with kids.”

  This time Kayla did not resist the urge. She took hold of his arm, moved in close, and said, “You just come with me before we both freeze to the spot.”

  She took him to her mother’s favorite café. For the students who used it daily, the place was just another cramped café set down just another narrow cobblestone lane. The air was filled with end-of-term chatter and steam from the old-fashioned cappuccino machine. Everything was done by hand. The ceiling was so low Adam could not stand upright. The tables were rickety and piled with students’ bags and scarves and hats and mittens. The benches were the same as when Kayla had come as a little girl.

  The man behind the counter resembled the ruddy-faced gentleman who had served her long ago, and the concoction was still made in the time-honored fashion. Chocolate was scooped from a tin bearing the crest of the company that had imported chocolate for eleven generations of English kings. He used a reed whisk to whip the liquid to froth. The shop became filled with the perfume of the Spice Islands and redolent with the memories of a mother who used such moments to describe the voyage their chocolate had made. Devonshire cream and Channel Islands milk were steamed to perfection. Tall glasses with wire frames were filled two-thirds with chocolate, then topped with an inch of creamy foam.

  Kayla had not been in the shop since the last time her mother took her. It was just too painful to come alone. To ask her father would have meant explaining, and that would only have opened his old wounds as well as her own. Kayla paid the man, then carried the glasses back to Adam’s corner table.

  Light through the lead-paned window turned his hair both russet and gold. Adam looked like the perennial graduate student, one whose stipend had long since run out. His hair fell over his ears and his frayed shirt collar. His navy jacket was substandard, especially for someone who worked for her father’s firm.

  Kayla seated herself across from him. “Drink.”

  He did as she ordered. He blinked and licked the froth from his upper lip. Drank again. “Wow.”

  “You like it?”

  He took a deeper swallow. “What is this?”

  The same deep welling came over her, such that she reached across and took his hand. Just friends, she reminded herself. Because that was all it could ever be. She had no heart left to give to a man. Especially a complete stranger. The words fluttered and rustled through her brain like autumn leaves in winter’s first wind. Just friends.

  Adam looked down at her hand holding his. He set down his glass. “Did I say something right?”

  “My mother brought me here. Long after she graduated, she kept coming back to visit friends who had once taught her.”

  “Like Dr. Beachley.”

  “Especially her. I haven’t seen the professor since the funeral. Or come back here.”

  She watched him finish his drink and sigh his satisfaction. “You have foam all over you. Chin, nose, mouth, cheek. You drink like a little boy.”

  He liberally applied his napkin. “Better?”

  “Much.” She slipped the envelope from her pocket and slipped it across the table. “I’m an official company emissary today. I asked Daddy if I could help out with something. This was it.”

  Adam made no move toward the unsealed envelope. “Does this have something to do with why I’m not in the office today?”

  “Sort of. Open the envelope, Adam.”

  He did so, pulled out the single slip of paper, and stared at it dumbly. “Five thousand dollars?”

  “Pounds,” she corrected. “About ten thousand dollars at today’s exchange rate.”

  “For what?”

  “He said you were to consider it a signing bonus.”

  “But I haven’t. Signed anything, I mean. We haven’t even agreed on my salary.”

  Kayla released his hand. “You’ve said it yourself, your mother’s illness stripped the cupboard bare. You’re living in rented rooms. Your clothes, how can I put this?”

  “I’m not after charity.”

  “Joshua wants to fire half the remaining staff, starting with you. Daddy calls it a gradual amputation and has refused. This morning, Joshua told my father that he intends to take the matter up with the board. He says that either they make these severe cutbacks, or the company goes under.”

  “What does your father say?”

  “It’s three weeks to Christmas. What difference does it make if they wait until January? That’s what he told Joshua. What he told Honor . . .”

  “Go on, Kayla.”

  “He didn’t actually say it. But what he’s thinking is, the company is going under.”

  “How long does he think they have?”

  “Three months at the current level of employment.”

  “So three months if he keeps the people, and how long if Joshua gets his way?”

  “Twice that, maybe a bit more.”

  “That’s a big difference.”

  “These aren’t just employees to Daddy. They are friends. They share his vision.”

  Adam look
ed at her with an intensity that seemed to peel away the layers. “You are a really great daughter.”

  “I don’t feel like it at all. I feel . . .” She pointed at the check. “Daddy says you should have a bonus for coming all this way. As chief financial officer, Joshua has to sign off on all employment contracts. If Joshua gets his way with the board and you’re fired, Daddy might not be able to give you anything then.”

  “It’s been a while since I’ve had extra money.” Adam picked up the check, shook his head over the amount, folded it care-fully, and stowed it in his pocket. “Are we done?”

  “No. Daddy intends for you to spend what days you have as his protégé. He needs you to look like one.” She rose to her feet and said briskly, “Let’s go kit you out.”

  chapter 8

  They left the café and entered Oxford’s old town. Adam felt himself transported to a distant era, one where gargoyles might well spread their stony wings and leap from high gables. Kayla led him down cobblestone lanes, tight caverns carved from buildings of stained glass and golden stone. Occasionally the crowds pushed them together, causing their bodies to brush. Adam wondered if she shared the same electric hum every time they touched.

  Kayla named ancient structures with the casual manner of introducing old friends. The Radcliffe Camera, Foyles, Brasenose, Magdalen, Balliol. She spoke of others who had walked there before—Isaac Newton, C. S. Lewis, Cromwell, Tolkien, a dozen kings of England, hundreds of heads of state from all around the globe. She walked him through the Covered Market, past dis-plays of pheasants nailed to the butchers’ doorposts by their tail feathers, and pig trotters stuffed with smoked bacon, and forest mushrooms pickled in dark ale. Adam emerged at the other end and was blinded by the sun, such that all his senses were filled with light and the scent of Kayla’s hair.

  Relationships had never come easy to him. His connections to women were shallow. Yet here, in a world removed from any he had known, at a time when everything in his life was either shattered or uncertain, Adam found himself unwinding. The prospect of deepening mysteries beckoned within the sunlit lanes.

  He drew her to one side and declared, “I want to help.”

  “What?”

  “You. Your father. The company. I want to be part of solving this crisis.”

  “There might be nothing anyone can do.”

  “Still, Kayla, I’d like to try.”

  She nodded thoughtfully and slipped her hand around his arm. “You make me feel a little ashamed.”

  “Why?”

  “Daddy gave me a check this morning. Fifty thousand pounds from his own savings. It’s to help me try and sort through the mess we’re facing in Africa.” Their walk was slower now, but purposeful. Adam let her guide him to the door of a barber-shop. “All I could think of was, four months. This gives me four more months to find a way out. And here you are, broke, a stranger, four thousand miles from home, maybe no job in a week’s time, and you want to help.”

  The bell over the door jangled as they entered. Kayla put his name on the list, then guided him to the waiting area. When they were seated, Adam leaned in very close and said, “Give me the money.”

  “What?”

  “Fifty thousand pounds gives you four months, that’s what you said. So take twelve and a half for the next month and let me invest the rest. I’ll set you up a couple of investments that feed your project a regular income.”

  “You have no idea what you’re asking.”

  “I’m trying to give your project some extra breathing space.”

  Kayla shook her head so vehemently it carried through her entire body. “You don’t know what you’re asking,” she repeated.

  “I know your father’s gone to bat for me. A stranger he has no reason to trust. Especially when his firm is facing something pretty awful. Okay. So I owe him big-time. And he’s concerned enough about what you’re doing in Tanzania that he’s covered his walls with your photographs.” Adam leaned in closer still. “I’m good at what I do, Kayla. Very, very good.”

  After the barber, Kayla first led him to the bank the company used. Once the check had been cashed and an account opened, she guided him next door for a new cell phone. From there Kayla led him along yet another pedestrian lane of cobblestones and growing shadows. She stopped before a shop whose bowed window was framed in wood blackened by time. The gold lettering above the door declared it to be as a haberdashery and gentlemen’s clothier, established in 1608. She asked, “Are you comfortable with spending money?”

  “I haven’t had much experience lately.”

  The door gave a cheerful ring as she pushed it open. “Do yourself a favor and don’t look at any price in here.”

  The haberdashery was narrow but very deep. When Kayla introduced herself and explained what they were after, they were led to the rearmost room, one that most customers never saw. The shop’s back chamber was fitted out like a gentleman’s club. The walls were oiled panels, the wood’s grain lost to candle smoke and age. Kayla settled into a horsehair settee and watched as the salesman treated Adam with a butler’s deference. At her insistence, he purchased a suit shaded somewhere between navy and smoke, a jacket, two pairs of slacks, three dress shirts, two ties, and an overcoat. Adam did as she had instructed, biting down on his worries over the cost. Only once did he look at a price tag. It was enough for a quiet cry of very real pain.

  For Kayla, time became split into tiny fragments. The day’s every nuance could be extracted and examined. She saw the dust motes dance in light from the narrow rear windows. She tasted the waxy oil used on the wall panels. The salesman whistled a rambling tune as he pinned Adam’s trousers. Kayla recalled playing with her dolls on the same ancient Persian carpet while her mother sat in the chair where she was now, talking with her father as the salesman stood him upon the same stool that Adam used.

  Kayla had always assumed she would grow up and find a man just like her father. She had thought the pimply-faced young men of school would one day vanish, and in their stead would be her prince. Then it was university in America, and young men with brash voices who spoke of the money they would earn or the power they would wield, and how Kayla would fit so beautifully into their futures. Ambition was their calling card. Their intelligent gazes and strong features and easy confidence proclaimed that they had been born to claim the future.

  Her last year at school, Kayla had begun fearing that her chance at any true passion had been whispered on a night when she had not been listening. Or perhaps her life’s mate had smiled at her at one of the endless stream of parties, and she had been too preoccupied to see, and any meaningful dreams had been buried with her mother.

  Then a classmate had shared plans of a year in Africa. She was going to work for Oxfam on their Fair Trade project, helping small farmers gain a greater share of the revenue from their products. The next day, Kayla had signed up for what she thought would be a sort of working vacation. Instead, she had found a passion worthy of investing her life.

  Or so it had seemed, until the man she thought she knew had walked away with her project’s funding. And broken her heart in the process.

  Which had brought her home. To this. Sitting in her mother’s chair, watching a stranger walk to the changing room and hand his new clothes back through the curtain.

  She blinked away the sudden stinging and smiled as the salesman returned with a silver tea service. She cleared her throat and asked, “How do you take your tea?”

  “I have no idea.” Adam swept aside the red-velvet curtain and reemerged in a new shirt and slacks. “I don’t have much experience with drinking tea in a shop.”

  “You’ll find there’s not much difference from drinking it anywhere else.”

  “Very funny.” He sat on the seat next to hers, the tiny round table between them. Just as her mother and father had once sat. Kayla had loved to pour the tea, setting the silver strainer over the cup just as she did now . . .

  “What’s wrong, Kayla?”

 
Kayla felt the harmonies of planets in parallel orbit, just from Adam speaking those three quiet words. She knew tension had redrawn the angles of her face. She knew her chin had jutted in a fashion that made her look old. And her lips were tightly compressed. She had seen the expression often enough in her mirror over the past ten months.

  Kayla needed both hands to steady the pot and pour the tea. “I was thinking of Africa.”

  Adam took the cup, let her add milk, declined sugar. “Tell me where you are.”

  Perhaps it was the way he spoke that last word. Where you are. Where her life is now. Not in the past. This very moment. She set down the pot, and said the first thing that came to her mind. “I drink a lot of tea in Africa. The water isn’t safe unless it’s boiled, and even boiled it still tastes horrid. So I drink tea all day long. All Westerners do. Tea or coke or bottled water, and sometimes the shipments of water from Europe don’t come through. Our office has its own filtration system, and then we boil the water hard and use tea to mask the flavor.”

  She stared at the rear window and the tiny walled garden beyond. The intensity of Adam’s gaze sent her soaring away, back to a world of yellow heat and eternal dust. She was there, and yet intensely here as well.

  “Kayla.”

  She started. “Sorry. I was . . .”

  “Away. Tell me what you are seeing.”

  “East Africa is in its third year of drought. The lack of rain dominates everything. All the trees around the cities have been chopped down for fuel. There is electricity a few hours each day, but the poorer families can’t afford to use it, especially for cooking. The pennies they earn go for food. If there’s any money left over, they send one child to school. Sometimes the eldest, sometimes the brightest. Whoever is lucky enough to shine. The others work. Everybody works all the time, and hopefully there’s food to eat and money left over for the one lucky child to study.”

  She saw herself walking the yellow road from the compound where many of the Europeans lived to the project’s offices. The compound was on the airport road, about a mile and a half closer to Dar es Salaam than the offices. She often walked the road in the cool of early dawn. If she missed her walk, it meant no exercise that day, because later the heat grew overpowering. The hour between night and day was very special. There was little car traffic, but the road was nonetheless very full. Children fortunate enough to go to school walked with their books and wooden tablets, for no family could afford the luxury of writing paper. The children who herded goats or the family cow watched the students with carefully blank faces, revealing neither envy nor the hopelessness of a life forever denied them. The dust was not so bad then, and the sky was awash in a gentle light. One of Kayla’s tenets was that every family involved in her project had to place all their children in school. She was very strict about that. It meant she could walk the road and smile at the children, and feel that she was making a difference in other small lives.